Duke Street offloads Laurel Funerals for £75m

The transaction saw 36 of Laurel's sites transferred into a new entity, LMF Management Services, which was acquired by Dignity. The listed funeral services group paid £38m for the sites. 

The remaining 47 sites, as well as Laurel's central office operations, have been bought by August Equity-backed Funeral Services Partnership (FSP). It is estimated August paid £37m for the sites.

The FSP deal was financed via August funds as well as debt from Ares and HSBC. Following the transaction, FSP almost doubled in size and now has 130 branches across the UK.

Previous investment
Duke Street acquired Laurel in April 2012 for £37.5m from previous backers Sovereign Capital, in a deal supported by Babson Capital Europe, Metric Capital Partners and Alcentra. HSBC and RBS also provided debt for the deal, according to unquote" data. The transaction the first made by Duke Street after it moved to a deal-by-deal strategy.

Sovereign acquired LM Funerals in September 2003 for £21m from 3i and Aberdeen Murray Johnstone Private Equity.

In 1995, 3i and Aberdeen Murray Johnstone backed the management buy-in of the funeral service company.

Company
Until this most recent deal, the company operated 83 funeral parlours throughout the UK, all of which trade under the LM Funerals name. The company is headquartered in Wolverhampton.

The 36 sites that were acquired by Dignity reported EBITDA of £4.1m for 2014.

People
Deborah Kemp is CEO of Laurel. Charlie Troup is partner at Duke Street.

Phillip Greenfield is CEO of FSP. Aatif Hassan is a partner at August.

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• Topics
• Exits
• UK / Ireland
• Duke Street
• August Equity LLP
• Sovereign Capital
• 3i